'Ey up Chuck!

Pattern: Chuck by Andi Satterlund
Yarn: Random lambswool from my stash
Size: 37" bust

Knitting was my first real crafting love. I shudder to think how many hours I must have spent clacking needles in front of a movie (unless it has subtitles which quickly puts paid to crafting). As a hobby it has, however, caused me as much heartache as pleasure, I reckon. The trouble with knitting is you often don't know until the very end if something is going to work or not, and more often than not I would find the garment didn't fit as I would like it to. So I have very few items to show for my years of knitting. In fact, I think there's one thing that I wear. But I love the act of knitting so figured I would give it another go.


I chose Chuck by Andi Satterlund, as folks in the blogosphere seem to have had so much success, and the styles are so retro and gorgeous. The pattern is awesome and what brought great joy to my heart was that it is seamless!! Hurray! I'm not afraid of seaming as I know the tricks, but it's just so tedious to have to spend hours doing that when you thought you were pretty much finished. Even the sleeves are picked up and knitted rather than attached at the end. Thanks, Andi. :-)

The only slight (and this is very slight) annoyance with this pattern is that at one point you have two different stitch patterns running and it gets a bit complex trying to remember which part you're up to in each. This resulted in me making a mistake which is of course all I can see when I look at the sweater!! But overall I'm pleased with it. It's not quite as neat as Andi's but it's definitely wearable and I took it for a spin to work the other day. It kept me warm all day and I wore it over a high-waisted dress so the sweater's short length worked really well. By the end of the day, the waistband was a bit looser than it started but I guess that's knitwear for you. I added some buttons because I have a thing about cables and buttons.

Ooh, I should mention that I actually, for the first time ever, bothered to block this project! I've always been a non-believer. I mean, it's basically knitwear torture. I'm going to soak you and then make you sit in a specified position for 3 days until you dry and at the end of that, woe betide you if you don't fit me perfectly!! And much as I hate to say it, the torture worked. It fit really well and the stitches all sat neatly. So it turns out I was being stupid all this time.

I'm really looking forward to making more of Andi's patterns and already have a Miette on the needles for a friend.